MLC Sydney - Nepal Service Project Day 4

Another early morning bus ride greeted the MLC group on day 4 of their service project week. This time it was a 2 hour bus ride to the village of Phulbari, just outside the Kathmandu Valley near the mountain resort town of Dhulikhel. The drive provided everyone with a chance to rest as well as see some beautiful countryside and breathe some fresh air. The ‘road’ approaching the village gets pretty rough and in places took us within metres of people’s houses so that we could see the children playing and the cows, buffalos and goats tied up outside.

Amongst this rural setting we found the Phulbari school, the main building of which was recently built by one of our partners, Rabindra Puri. As we walked down the driveway into the school the students and teachers made a tunnel and greeted each of us with flowers – Phulbari means ‘flower garden’ in Nepali. It was a wonderfully warm welcome and quite unlike anything the MLC group had probably ever experienced.

After a quick tour of the school it was down to work. Some of the girls and teachers were going to be painting murals, one on the back wall of each of three classrooms that desperately needed brightening up. The rest of the group were assigned teams of students from the school and they set about carrying out a massive clean up campaign. We had brought 2 bins as well as brooms and dustpans especially for this task. Picking up rubbish is not generally something Nepali school children are familiar with and this was evident from the state of their school ground! Some were reluctant to join in at first but were soon embarrassed to be left out whilst their friends got busy.




In 2 very hectic hours the school was transformed, inside and out. The 3 murals look brilliant and bring some colour and vibrancy to the classrooms. The school grounds have, I doubt, ever looked so clean and tidy.

The next task was the handing out of school bags. The girls from MLC had spent many months fundraising prior to this trip and they had collected enough money to purchase 600 school backpacks – 1 for each child at the school. We had arranged to have ‘MLC Sydney’ printed on the bags along with the name of the Phulbari school and the Mitrataa Foundation.

The children were so excited to receive in many cases, their first school bag, that some of us were almost crushed in the excitement! They were clearly going to be used with pride. MLC also made a donation of resource materials such as stationery and books which were much needed and appreciated.

With all of the work out of the way it was time for a quick volleyball contest between a group of girls from the school and the team from MLC. It soon became clear that neither side had much experience playing volleyball and as such they were evenly matched, so keeping score seemed unnecessary!

After a sumptuous feast of dahl bhat prepared from locally grown organic rice and vegetables, it was time to face the long and at times slow bus ride back to town. The day was long and exhausting but provided a good contrast for the girls between schools in Kathmandu and those in the villages, another layer of experience to add to their amazing trip.